ust of Judge Pyncheon's
integrity, and this utter denial, apparently, of his claim to stand in
the ring of human sympathies,--were they founded in any just perception
of his character, or merely the offspring of a woman's unreasonable
prejudice, deduced from nothing?

The Judge, beyond all question, was a man of eminent respectability.
The church acknowledged it; the state acknowledged it. It was denied
by nobody. In all the very extensive sphere of those who knew him,
whether in his public or private capacities, there was not an
individual--except Hepzibah, and some lawless mystic, like the
daguerreotypist, and, possibly, a few political opponents--who would
have dreamed of seriously disputing his claim to a high and honorable
place in the world's regard. Nor (we must do him the further justice
to say) did Judge Pyncheon himself, probably, entertain many or very
frequent doubts, that his enviable reputation accorded with his
deserts. His conscience, therefore, usually considered the surest
witness to a man's integrity,--his conscience, unless it might be for
the little space of five minutes in the twenty-four hours, or, now and
then, some black day in the whole year's circle,--his conscience bore
an accordant testimony with the world's laudatory voice. And yet,
strong as this evidence may seem to be, we should hesitate to peril our
own conscience on the assertion, that the Judge and the consenting
world were right, and that poor Hepzibah with her solitary prejudice
was wrong. Hidden from mankind,--forgotten by himself, or buried so
deeply under a sculptured and ornamented pile of ostentatious deeds
that his daily life could take no note of it,--there may have lurked
some evil and unsightly thing. Nay, we could almost venture to say,
further, that a daily guilt might have been acted by him, continually
renewed, and reddening forth afresh, like the miraculous blood-stain of
a murder, without his necessarily and at every moment being aware of it.

Men of strong minds, great force of character, and a hard texture of
the sensibilities, are very capable of falling into mistakes of this
kind. They are ordinarily men to whom forms are of paramount
importance. Their field of action lies among the external phenomena of
life. They possess vast ability in grasping, and arranging, and
appropriating to themselves, the big, heavy, solid unrealities, such as
gold, landed estate, offices of trust and emolument, and public ho